Decapitation Lessons -

For this round of reviews, I figured I'd put up a bunch of zombie flicks. I saw 28 Weeks Later at the cheap show and thought I could maybe try a theme-posting format for off weeks when I'm not sure what to review.

The films I've chosen are notable for one reason for another. Either they're severely underrated, hilarious but still great, or they're an interesting re-imagining of the genre. But, no matter which category these fall into it's time run your XBOX's double time and practice those head shots, because here is a heaping mess of zombie flicks.

Title: 28 Weeks Later
Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Year: 2007

28 Weeks Later picks up pretty much where Danny Boyle's big quasi-zombie hit left off, but while a lot of people hailed the originality of the first one and seemed to stick their nose up at this punchier sequel, I have to say I really liked this more than the original.

Maybe it's just the lover of trash in me, the same guy who kind of prefers Aliens to Alien, given the choice. Or maybe it's that 28 Weeks Later carries some of the same ideas as the original movie, intensifies some of them, and provides a nice slab of splattery gore on top to round it out.

I guess what I'm saying is this: while my favorite thing about 28 Days Later was its inspiring portrayal of a deserted, post-apocalyptic London, and its tale of people surviving a plague of their zombie-like infected neighbors, the actual screen time for infected zombie-things versus humans is pretty fractional. It focuses more on story and character development, and the implications of the situation.

Nothing wrong with that.

Occasionally a serious attempt at dealing with the emotional states of people in realistic horror-movie circumstances is called for; however, on the second outing, I think what we all really wanted to see was more straight-up zombie movie type shit, and 28 Weeks Later doesn't fail to deliver some goods. In fact, I'd say the original 28 Days Later would probably have been much more top-notch (though perhaps less critically acclaimed) if it had had a few more pitched battles with the infected, and a few more gratuitous shots of exploding and bitten-off body parts.

That's not to say Weeks skimps on plot, and its subtext about the inherent ethical and logistical dilemmas surrounding the military occupation of one nation by another is pretty deftly dealt with, in a nicely topical (i.e. Iraq war) way. Also called into question is the notion of complete control over nature/a zone affected by a natural disaster, and over the behavior of human beings in such areas.

But really, what you really have is a lot of intense squibbing, a particularly protracted and gruesome scene that would do Fulci proud, and a helicopter sequence that rivals a similar scene in Planet Terror. Sure you have to allow for a few stretches of coincidence, but so what? Director Fresnadillo otherwise does a capable and entertaining re-visit to the world of 'the infected'.

All in all, a hit with me, so why not with you?

Title: Zombi 3 (sometimes Zombie 2)
Director: Lucio Fulci/Bruno Mattei
Year: 1988

Hah! Lucio Fulci (The Beyond, Zombi 2) and Bruno Mattei (Hell of the Living Dead)??? Directing the same film? It's almost like a dream come true, at least for those of us with a distinctive lack of taste.

Although Fulci was notoriously unhappy with the film, and left in mid-production due to a stroke (prompting assistant director Mattei to take the helm) I still think Zombi 3 is an effective, if run-of-the-mill Italian zombie flick. You have your top secret government program, your deadly chemical weapon which brings the dead back to life as flesh-eating cannibals, and your group of terrorists trying to steal said weapon, of course. You've also got your group of horny soldiers on leave having to protect a party of young people in an abandoned hotel, and your soulful disk jockey providing much-needed philosophical commentary on the ensuing zombie apocalypse...wait...what?

Yeah, who cares, really, because the dead start walking, start jumping out of crazy places, popping out of pools of water, and...well...eating folks. You got heads exploding and pregnant chicks attacked by zombies, and all kinds of other good stuff. Honestly, I like this movie just as much as I liked Zombi 2, and, honestly, as far as pacing is concerned, this one is a little more kick-ass. The zombies move a little more, making the action more intense.

I guess, if one were to draw comparisons, there's two mutually exclusive ways to elicit horror from zombies, at least according to Italian cinema: one, have them move very slowly, emphasizing the fact that they are dead, rotting, and barely sentient. The horror is part-visceral but also cerebral in that the buildup to actual violence is so slow and agonizing thus the audience is allowed to focus for longer on their own repugnance at being touched or in proximity to a moving dead thing. The resulting gore sequences from these buildups are always lingered upon in a way which is meant to disgust. This approach is dependent on a buildup of tension.

Or, you can have the zombies kick some more ass, and the horror is quite a bit more physical in nature. In other words, the audience realizes that if the characters don't move quickly themselves, these undead juggernauts of destruction will be shortly feasting on their flesh. The zombies are resistant to pain and most physical injury, only a shot to the head takes them down. They are strong and relentless in their drive for human flesh. This approach, as I've said, elicits a more physical fear, but it allows the pacing to be quite faster.

Such is the case in Zombi 3, in my opinion. It and its predecessor are just not comparable in terms of approach.

Zombi 2 was an exercise in Fulci's trademark prolonged, tortuous buildup, and was focused on the arousal of revulsion at the sight and thought of the zombies themselves. Zombi 3's approach is more visceral, more focused, in most ways, on the effects of an assault by zombies. More centered on the actual battling of the undead. So, it's pacing is faster, much more kickass.

Anyway, you've an excellent zombie attack scene involving a pregnant chick. Pretty awesome.

Recommended.

Title: Hell of the Living Dead
Director: Bruno Mattei
Year: 1980

I think most people sort of lambast this movie for its patent absurdity, or they try to enjoy it in an ironic Mystery Science Theater 3000 manner. My aforementioned lack of taste forces me to do neither. I sincerely enjoyed this film.

Director Bruno Mattei manages to make an interesting political statement about poverty, the third world, and developed nations' responsibility to the third world while avoiding the pitfall of elevating his movie to 'serious' status. In other words, it's still a trashy, over-the-top, exploitative 1980's Italian zombie flick.

One thing that people either love or hate is Mattei's unapologetic use of National Geographic stock footage. There are completely inappropriate moments in the film where characters are staring off-camera and the cut takes us to some grainy footage of a tapir drinking water from a pool, or a flock of flamingos taking off into the sky. The effect is mostly ridiculous, but if you find it humorous, or, like me, genuinely like animals and nature footage in general, it's almost like Mattei is providing something for everyone, albeit in a shamelessly cheap way.

You've also got some ridiculous moments of female nudity, especially the infamous 'nude anthropology' scene which I won't divulge in any more detail. Suffice to say, Hell may or may not have its tongue firmly in cheek, but the utter absurdity of the entire sequence is something I fully appreciated (it is, after all, an Italian movie). Even this sequence isn't free of the overabundance of stock footage hi-jacked for the film, as most of the 'native' sequences appear to be stock, although there were a few parts where the transition is a little more seamless and I didn't see the culmination, as it were, coming.

Of course, I should touch on most peoples' reason for watching this: the zombies and the gore. The zombies are pretty standard fare. With the exception of the fact that most of them are supposed to be Papua New Guinea natives, they pretty much resemble your typical Romero zombies from the previous year's Dawn of the Dead. The gore is great though. The excellent head-popping, the biting and feasting sequences, the zombie rat at the beginning, and, of course, the OVER. THE. FUCKING. TOP. ending are not to be missed.

Fight Club this is not. And to me, that's all the more reason to watch.

Title: Dead Heat
Director: Mark Goldblatt
Year: 1988

Mark Goldblatt is better known for his editing work on movies like The Terminator, Predator 2, Starship Troopers etc. Dead Heat is one of his few forays into directing, and I wish he would have made some other attempts.

This late 80's flick is billed as an action-horror-comedy. But unlike many alleged multi-genre flicks, which tend to focus on avoiding alienating any particular audience and so please none of the audience, this one manages--effortlessly--to actually BE a horror film, and a buddy-cop comedy, and a straight up action flick all at once. How? Let's break it down, bit by bit.

First, how is Dead Heat a comedy? Well, I guess, for starters, the premise is pretty funny: deceased criminals brought back to life as ultra-violent and uber-hard-to-kill zombies who continue their lives of crime. Your main characters are two rogue cops, played by Treat Williams and...Joe Fucking Piscopo. They have to take down these zombie criminals, which usually results in a whole lot destruction, and said zombies dying, messily, a second time. Also, both cops are eventually killed and resurrected by the very 'resurrection machine' at the center of the film, which makes for even more hilarious antics and death puns.

At the same time, Dead Heat plays on the overt action elements of the buddy-cop genre to produce some nice stunt sequences and some cool 1980's gun play. And Treat Williams and Piscopo are pretty seamless as far as moving between ironic or darkly humorous dialogue and more hard-boiled fare.

And lastly, for horror, we have fucking zombies. The special effects are great, with many of them being downright gruesome. In fact, I think one of the reasons that this film either turned off or was straight up overlooked by a lot of people is the fact that it goes all the way with each of its genre claims. The effects don't skimp on the gross-out, the blood, or the gore. In fact, one part manages to wade into the territory of slap-stick gore, a la Dead Alive, during an infamous sequence taking place in a chinese restaurant. But overall, the effect of the two cops' deterioration throughout the course of the movie, and crazy special effects manage to make Dead Heat a little more serious and stomach-turning than I think people were expecting it to be.

Because of its sheer schizophrenic genre treatment, and its cast (which included a near-final appearance by Vincent Price), you'd think Dead Heat had the cult film formula down; but sadly this is probably one of the more obscure gems of the late 1980's. If you liked Return of the Living Dead, have a taste for Lethal Weapon and 48 Hours, and just generally enjoy zombies, guns, cops, car crashes, exploding bodies, and slowly-decaying protagonists, then Dead Heat should satisfy.

The Arena

Wow, lots of news since the last time I posted. My first semester of graduate school classes really depressed the level of nerd activity that I normally (or abnormally as the case may be) function at. I know it's been awhile and we've got some catching up to do.

A couple of additions to the blog itself:

I added three new lists to the little sidebar. The first is a list of my top 10 favorite horror flicks from the 1980's. They're not necessarily in any particular order, but John Carpenter's The Thing very obviously deserves 1st place out of that list (at least in my opinion). I can't think of a more effective psychological/confronting-the-unknown type of horror-thriller that has ever been made.

The second is a list of my top 15 favorite Cthulhu Mythos stories that were not written by Lovecraft. Some of the authors are well known Lovecraft Circle authors, folks who went on to bigger careers (such as Robert Bloch, author of 'Psycho'). Some of the authors are people who have made a name for themselves as writers without Lovecraft's name, but who occasionally come back to the Mythos to pen a story or two (notably Stephen King and Ramsey Campbell). Others are just folks like you and me who like to scribble out a yarn or two every once in awhile and sometimes they manage to toss off a really effective one.

The last list is just a compilation of my top 10 favorite grind records ever committed to vinyl, or digital audio, or magnetic tape, or whatever. I think people who are in the know will be most like to argue with me over this particular list, but whatever. I still like 'Misery Index' more than 'Anticapital' and that may have more to do with sentimental reasons than with merit, but it's my list. Go start a blog and make your own damn lists if you don't like mine.

Now for news, or more accurately, my wish list of crap that is soon to hit the fan.

Number one: Quentin Tarantino's extended and unrated cut of Death Proof has been announced for release on DVD on September 18th. That date lines up nicely with the date that has circulated the Internet rumor mill for the past couple of months, which provides me with some hope that Robert Rodriguez's extended and unrated cut of Planet Terror is on it's way as well, which has been rumored to hit shelves some time in October. Now, I know there are folks out there who are a-bristle with fury that the Weinstein Company is splitting Grindhouse up into its component flicks and releasing them on DVD separately, enough that there is a veritable clamour of Internet voices saying that we consumers should boycott the DVDs and force them to "do the right thing."

I have to be honest and say that I don't really care; I'm going to buy both movies any-fucking-way. And judging by the pre-order ranking Death Proof has over on DVD Empire (i.e. it was number one out of the top 100 pre-orders the week it was announced), there are probably many more people who agree with me. Seriously, Bob and Harvey and friends lost so much damn money on Grindhouse, I'm happy for any opportunity to pay them back for the chance they took on the project (and there's that part where I get to watch LONGER versions of both movies in the...not luxury...of my own filthy den). Plus, if they make enough money back on the DVD sales, there's always the chance they'll consider a sequel. Let's cross our fucking fingers and start budgeting the requisite 19.99 plus sales tax out of our paychecks.

In other DVD news, we've got Day Watch, the long-awaited sequel to Timur Bekmambetov's completely out-of-left-field fantasy horror hit Night Watch, coming to DVD in October, along with Jake West's ultra-gory sci-fi/horror/comedy Evil Aliens (this one I'm looking forward to in particular, based on all the hype I've heard about it), AND New Zealand director Jonathan King's Black Sheep, in an unrated version (fucking finally!). Lastly, I should remind you that the unrated director's cut of Stuart Gordon's From Beyond hits shelves in just a bare couple of days. Coincidentally (or maybe not so coincidentally), From Beyond is included in this round of reviews. EDIT: I also just saw that Shogun Assassin 3 is supposed to hit shelves next week as well.

In a final bit of movie news, check out the fucking R-rated (!!!) trailer for Aliens VS. Predator Requiem! Google it and check it out on IGN. Seriously. This trailer has more gore in it than any of the previous Alien or Predator movies combined. Someone is finally trying to make up for that sad mess that was 2004's Aliens Vs. Predator. http://media.movies.ign.com/media/746/746237/vids_1.html

Lastly, Bioshock just came out for the Xbox 360. I haven't picked it up yet, but let me tell you, as soon as I can tear myself away from Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for 5 minutes (and cough up the requisite cash...69.99$, ouch!), I'll be hitting up the local video game retail outlet for this bad boy. Or not. I may have to save that cash for Halo 3, which also makes landfall this month, and I've already plunked down 5 bucks on a pre-order for that sucker. One thing is for certain, I'm going to be real fucking broke this month, but real fucking happy. And really, really not doing my homework. Or not sleeping. Or both.

Ah, fuck it. Here are reviews:

Title: Deepstar Six

Director: Sean Cunningham

Year: 1989

Deepstar Six is the other undersea action/horror monster movie of 1989, generally overshadowed by the bigger-budgeted Leviathan. Director Sean Cunningham has producer credits on movies like Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, Jason X, and Freddy Vs. Jason. So, you know that means that he really likes Friday the 13th movies.

That was humor.

Anyway, Deepstar Six, despite its smaller budget, and more modest notoriety next to Leviathan, is probably the superior of the two films. In terms of storyline, it's certainly less cliched (although to say that about what most people regard as undersea re-makes of Alien would seem contradictory). I enjoyed the deep-sea-exploration-theme of this film a little more than the runs-into-monster-while-on-the-job-for-a-parasitic-multinational-corporation-theme of Leviathan, which definitely parallels Alien a little too closely for comfort. The idea of exploring gigantic caverns beneath the sea floor was kind of intriguing, and Cunningham successfully brought some sense of wonder to that portion of the film.

Overall, Deepstar is definitely more of an adventure story with a monster than just a straight sci-fi/horror set-'em-up and knock'-'em-down type. This works, because it allowed the storyline to use the ocean as more of a character than in Leviathan, which all but ignores its setting except as a way of substituting it for outer space. In fact, now that I think of it, Deepstar employs the hostile-setting card much earlier on, whereas Leviathan for the most part only employs it in the end in a scene which basically replays the Nostromo self-destruct sequence from Alien, except with water and Peter Weller.

Then we have the monster. Rather than being the major set piece for the storyline, the monster in Deepstar is more of a wildcard. It essentially remains a total unknown until the last half of the movie, and then it comes out of left field wreaking havoc. The idea that I like is that the movie could work just as well without it, but we do have it, and it's sort of like an extra bonus. "New: Undersea Adventure Now Featuring Monster!" Obviously, in contrast, Leviathan's story revolves entirely around the monster, its origins, and the characters' relationship to it.

Speaking of characters...The folks we got in Deepstar are pretty well-developed, by b-movie standards. Miguel Ferrer's character sort of steals the show as the archetypal tragic nervous wreck who heaps about as many problems on his comrades as does the harsh environment and the monster. You'll probably remember Miguel as the greedy up-and-coming corporate scumbag who gets blown up by Clarence Boddicker in Robocop.

As far as special effects go, it's a toss up in my opinion. Leviathan of course has the advantage of budget, and of Stan Winston's creature effects, which manage to pull the monster out of the realm of the mere Alien rip-off and make it a combination Alien and The Thing rip-off, which works pretty well, and satisfies any goo-and-gross-out creature lover. But Deepstar still makes an excellent showing, and even though its budget is smaller, its scale is much larger. There are a lot more sweeping vistas and epic effects here than you might expect. The set design between the two films is pretty comparable, but because Leviathan spends so much time wallowing in metallic pipe-lined corridors and futuristic medlabs, and Deepstar varies it up a bit more, I'd definitely say Deepstar is once again the more effective film.

The monster is great, unique, and totally non-anthropomorphic, which is a lovely twist. I thought it was very well-designed and cool looking, and because you don't really get to see it at all until the last part of the movie, it's actually kind of a nice shocker when it does its big reveal, because you have no idea what to expect

Lastly, I better mention that if you're looking for a good splattering of gore, Deepstar Six is the clear winner. I'll just say that. There are some excellent kills. This movie isn't shy when it comes to carnage.

So, I'll apologize if my review just turned out to be a compare/contrast between Deepstar Six and its rival counterpart Leviathan, but I think it was sort of an inevitability, plus I managed to get you two reviews for the price of one, and in that sense, everyone wins.

However, with the DVD, everyone loses because the goddamn thing is only available in an ultra-murky full frame edition. Someone, please get on this.

Title: Contamination (sometimes Alien Contamination)

Director: Luigi Cozzi

Year: 1980

This film is a total classic. I would venture so far as to say that it's the best corrosive-alien-spores-causing-people-to-spontaneously-explode flick ever made.

And of course it's Italian.

I'm not sure how the plot germ for this movie came about, but I'm hoping it went something along the lines of this: (heavy Italian accents here) "How can we top Alien?" "Alien had that guy's chest exploding and the alien comes out." "Yeah, we can't just do that. Everyone will think it's just a rip-off." "What if we have the alien eggs blow up in peoples' faces?" "Didn't they already do that in Alien?" "Kinda." "Wait, I've got it. What if the alien eggs blow up in peoples' faces, and instead of some crab thing coming out, they just get showered with slime. And then, instead of it taking a 3rd of the film for the thing to bust out of the dude's chest, we have their chests explode instantly...and here's the shocker...there's no alien inside!" "You know what? Work in that the slime is corrosive like the alien blood in Alien, and you've got yourself a filming budget."

And then, add that the alien eggs are being distributed through an illegally-operated Columbian coffee cartel, and throw in a plucky Italian female lead, and you've got a recipe for INCREDIBLE.

There's almost no more that I can say other than that you have to see this movie to believe it. Everything about it is great. The story, the excellent bad acting, the even worse over-dubbing of abominally excellent dialogue, the over-the-top effects, the ridiculous gratuitousness of said effects, the alien creature, the plethora of settings--it's everything you love and expect from Italian b-cinema.

I hope that this review isn't coming off as snarky. I'm trying to express my very sincere enthusiasm for this movie. It is seriously great. It's not actually that funny or bad, it's just that it is an Italian sci-fi/horror movie, in English, from the 1980's so there are certain things to expect.

Actually Contamination ends up being much, much more original than many of its contemporary alien flicks. Sort of Pod People meets crime thriller meets Alien meets 1980's Italian gore, and I do mean gore. As in lingering, slow-motion shots of folks' thoracic cavities busting wide open and releasing all of their internal organs--that kind of gore. And somewhere in all this mess is a somewhat convoluted but pretty nifty plot, and some typically overblown characters, including the drunken ex-astronaut played by British B-flick great, Ian McCulloch (Zombi).

The effects are beautifully designed and executed. The big cyclops alien deserves a place on the shelf with many another more recognized movie creatures. Everything is done with typical Italian aplomb, from that tendency to film on location in exotic locales, to the culminating gun fight action sequences at the end of the film. There's really nothing about Contamination that dissappoints. It delivers on every level. And of course, all the exploding bodies and flying guts make for absolutely essential viewing.

Blue Underground's special edition DVD of Contamination is amazing. The transfer is so pristine, the movie looks like it was shot yesterday.

Title: H.P. Lovecraft's From Beyond

Director: Stuart Gordon

Year: 1986

So, I've said it before, and I'm going to drive the point home yet again, when I watch this movie back-to-back with Re-Animator, I think From Beyond is the better of the two.

You want me to back that shit up? Well, you know me well enough by now. I've always got my shit backed up.

Let's start with source material. As Lovecraft adaptations go, source material plays a big role in the success or failure of the subsequent film. Any Lovecraft aficianado is going to have to concede that Herbert West: Re-Animator is simply not an example Lovecraft's better work. At the same time, trying to adapt and film something too ambitious, and possibly too obtuse, like The Call of Cthulhu is just as risky, especially when we're talking about the budgets and effects technology that was available during the 80's. So here we have Gordon moving from the somewhat superficial shock pulp that was Re-Animator to a relatively accessible but serious and representative example of Lovecraft's work. We're off to a good start.

What about the adaptation? You could be working with the greatest story in the English language and still fuck it up spectacularly. So how well did Brian Yuzna's adaptation work? In my opinion, remarkably well. I think Gordon and Yuzna probably learned a thing or two in their work on Re-Animator, and used it to full advantage for From Beyond. True, Lovecraft's original short story, being just that--very short--only makes up about the first quarter, perhaps less of the final film; it's how the story is extended that makes a difference to me. I may even venture far enough to say that Yuzna's adaptation attempts to more fully explore the underlying idea that Lovecraft basically hints at in the original tale, while also drawing from other ideas and creatures in Lovecraft's catalog (i.e. the implication that the creature that imitates Dr. Pretorius is actually a shoggoth).

The idea that From Beyond becomes a story of human transformation, both psychological, and physical, and that simply altering our sensations can lead to this transformation is kind of intriguing. Cronenberg might have been jealous. But I think what really stands out about the screenwriting here is how reverently and seriously Gordon and Yuzna try to approach Lovecraft's notion of the unknown and fear of the unknown.

That's not to say the film is without flaws, or is free of camp. It is, after all, a Stuart Gordon flick, a Brian Yuzna flick, and a 1980's horror movie--but when you consider the canon of good Lovecraft adaptations, From Beyond definitely earns a high status.

Of course, we also have Barbara Crampton in S&M gear, Ken Foree as...who else, Ken Foree (i.e. the same character he played in Dawn of the Dead), a healthy dose of 1980's gore, and some pretty excellent creature effects. Oh yeah, and decapitate me for forgetting: the incomparable Jeffrey Combs as Crawford Tillinghast.

The effects work is pretty damned good. A lot of goo, a lot of crazy creatures, and some pretty decent gore. I mean, you wouldn't expect less from Stuart Gordon, but I thought some of this stuff ranks at the top of the 1980's creature effects game. The designs are all great looking, the execution is excellent. I particularly enjoy the pineal gland popping out of Combs's forehead, as well as the effects for the Dr. Pretorius monster, some of the other random creatures that pop up, and the insane climax. I absolutely can't wait to see this in a nice new digital transfer, cleaned up, and in widescreen.

All in all From Beyond, in my opinion (and it's a weighty opinion to be sure), is the finest Gordon adaptation of Lovecraft, giving you the best of both worlds: some serious treatment of Lovecraft's fiction married to quintessential Gordon directing and Yuzna screenwriting--some ominous moments, some genuinely eery moments, some outrageous moments, some gross-out moments, and some great gory moments.

Yeah, this film has deserved some special treatment for a long time, and I'm sure that the decision to re-release this was based on the success of the Re-Animator special edition that just came out a few months back. MGM must have sat up and taken some fucking notice of Anchor Bay's high quality product. Next week, September 11th, after my Methods and Materials for Teaching the Sciences course, I will be standing in my local Best Buy thrusting my money furiously at some confused, zoo animal-like cashier.

Daymare

Some excellent news before we get to reviewing some excellent movies:

First, From Beyond is being released in the US on DVD in September in an unrated director's cut for the first time! This means we can all ditch our low-quality bootlegs of the fullscreen German release for a nice widescreen, digitally re-mastered edition of the Stuart Gordon classic. Perhaps I'll review it in the near future, but I'll say now that if I had to choose between Re-Animator and From Beyond (and I may take some guff for this) I would choose From Beyond hands down. It's just a much gooier, and more serious (for Gordon) attempt to adapt Lovecraft.

Next, The Host, a South Korean monster flick that got pretty good reviews (and which I did not get to see on its US release because it was only showing in 75 theaters, and none of them were in Michigan) is coming out on DVD later in July. It looks like there is a big fat special edition that will be available, so I may be picking that up. It's a monster flick (plus!) and it features special effects by New Zealand's Weta Workshop (King Kong, The Lord of the Rings [plus, plus!!!])!

Lastly, and I just found this out mere seconds ago, there is going to be a movie adaptation of Stephen King's The Mist in October or November. Now let me say first that I'm not normally a big King fan. I did like the Gunslinger series (though I haven't read any books past Wizard and Glass) , and one or two of his other short stories, most of which I've read sort of by accident. I stumbled across this one the same way I stumbled across the others: while reading a used copy of some old horror anthology (can't remember the name) and was immediately in love. Not to be confused with John Carpenter's The Fog, The Mist is about a mysterious mist that covers a New England town and brings hordes of bizarre blood-thirsty monsters with it. Not just one kind of monster, an entire fucked up ecosystem of monsters. The premise with the alien-like creatures reminds me a bit of the original Half Life game, and I wonder if there wasn't some borrowing done there. But anyway, The Mist is hands down my favorite of King's short stories (next to Jerusalem's Lot), so the fact that it's being made into a film (can anyone say 'lots of CGI tentacles'?) is pretty awesome.

Now, on to the reviews!

Oh yeah, and see you all at Transformers next week.

Title: Demons

Director: Lamberto Bava

Year: 1985

Directed by Lamberto Bava (son of Italian director Mario Bava), and co-written by Dario Argento, 1985's Demons rates as one of the best horror films of the 1980's, at least in my own humble opinion. This is no slow, suspenseful shocker. Instead, it's a kick-ass, fast-paced, action-y, slimy, killfest set to a pounding soundtrack of heavy metal.

Filmed almost entirely in the Metropol, a gothic cathedral of some kind turned into a movie theater, the basic premise involves a group of people who are attending a special screening of an unnamed horror flick only to find that the movie itself transforms some of those watching into blood-thirsty demons. Chaos erupts, especially when the people find themselves mysteriously trapped in the building.

Of course, this being a film involving demonic transformation, anyone bitten or scratched or attacked by a demon turns into one themselves, so the horde just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Said demon transformation sequences are pretty excellent: gooey and pustulent just as we tend to like 'em. Worth remembering is the tooth sequence near the beginning of the film. I haven't seen anything like it before or since.

Besides being a terrific gorefest, and a swell actioner, Demons does a few other unique things to help it rise above the level of a lot of other horror stuff that surrounded it in the 80's. For one thing, the main character, George, our hero-at-large, doesn't just cry and scream and run for the duration of the movie. After the obligatory killing-off of his infected best friend, he arms himself with a big ole' samurai sword and Kawasaki motorcycle (part of a crazy display in the lobby of the movie theater), and goes to town, hacking and slashing up the mob of vicious demons.

The second major unique plot device comprises the ending of the film, and I'm not going to spoil it. Watch and see. I'll just say the scope of Demons goes far beyond the claustrophobic theater setting. And Mr. Argento and Mr. Bava are not above coming from left field with unexpected demon infections and unexpected deaths.

Lastly, the movie-within-a-movie gimmick is well-done, and kind of a cool idea. The way it eventually plays out leads to a pretty iconic horror sequence, one that I think should be better-remembered.

The special effects are great, especially the aforementioned demon-transformation scenes, but the demon make-up itself is also pretty effective, and the gore is extremely well done. It's not overly gross-out, but there is enough of it to be pretty satisfying to a jaded aficionado like myself, especially in the last half hour or so.

The movie is helped out by its kick-ass fast pacing and the mid-80's power metal soundtrack featuring bands like Accept and Saxon, which blasts in everytime the demons start attacking and mutilating people. This is absolutely essential viewing for any fan of 1980's horror. Everything about it is standout. The production is great, the effects are great, the characters are not obtrusively idiotic, the soundtrack is excellent, the direction and plot are kickass, and the gore is over the top and fun. Seriously not to be missed.

Title: Nightmare City

Director: Umberto Lenzi

Year: 1980

This should be filed under 'cult classic'. While masquerading as a zombie film, this fun, adrenaline-fueld romp features not zombies, but radiation-poisoned vampiric mutants that run, use weapons, stab people, and drink their blood. And the only way to stop them...is a bullet to the brain.

This is the much gorier, nastier, less hip older brother of Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later. Amidst the slew of Italian zombie/cannibal flicks that were coming out in 1980, Nightmare City stands out for taking a new perspective on the well-explored apocalyptic plague and its effects on human kind. Instead of slow, waddling, mindless walking dead, you are confronted with hyperactive vampire things, the creations of severe radiation poisoning, with the ability to regenerate their flesh, the intelligence to plan ambushes and use weapons, and, of course, a driving thirst for human blood.

Perhaps the film's only failing is its essentially throwaway characters. But they don't really matter at the end of the day, what with all the stabbings, eye gougings, blood drinking, nudity, pulpy bullet wounds and mutants with deep-fried-looking noggins. I would go so far as to say that this was probably another prime influence behind Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. Zombies that aren't really zombies using guns and eating people? Hmmm. Their victims, though seemingly dead, are reanimated by the mutant cells of their attackers and become bloodthirsty mutants themselves? Hmmm. A good portion of the action takes place inside a hospital? Well now, we may be stretching coincidence just a bit.

The makeup is cool, a different take on things, as I've said before, and the violence is pretty neat. It's all good fun, but there are some really awesome jaw-dropping gore sequences. When the main characters get their wind and realize that you have to give the creatures a copper-jacketed lobotomy to kill them, the movie quickly becomes an exploding-head fest. And some of those scenes are awesome. Especially when done in gratuitous slow motion.

So, to sum it all up: low on character, BUT: heavy on gore, heavy on action, heavy on ugly-looking makeup, heavy on violence, heavy on knives and clubs and guns, heavy on unique premise, and heavy on the vampire mutant 100 meter dash.

All in all? Fuck yeah. Especially if you liked Planet Terror and want to see where some of the inspiration probably came from.

Neon Maniacs/The Hidden

Title: Neon Maniacs
Director: Joseph Mangine
Year: 1986

This film exemplifies the human capacity for ingenuity. Or, at least, creative insanity. Exactly how the premise for this movie came about, and how someone managed to sell it to potential investors is beyond me, but that doesn't change the fact that Neon Maniacs is awesome. Chalk it up to "only in the 80's".

The film's basic premise is that a group of demonic monster-things lives inside the Golden Gate bridge and are somehow awakened and go on a rampage killing people (mostly teenagers...yay!). But the 'maniacs' themselves are the highlight of the show. They each have sort of a theme to their character and a different way of killing people. Ape, Archer, Axe, Decapitator, Doc, Hangman, Juice, Mohawk, Punk Biker, Samurai, Slasher, and Soldier. Regarding some of them, I'm not exactly sure which is which, but several of the more key maniacs are pretty obvious.

The baddest-ass is, of course, Samurai, who walks around with a samurai sword cutting up sinful youngsters and the like. Archer has a crossbow, Doc puts people out with ether and then does surgery on them, Hangman does exactly as his name implies, and etc. The make-up/creature effects on these guys are pretty excellent and fun. Oh, and I forgot to mention the only way to kill them is with water. And doing so tends to result in a spray of green slime.

Everything about this movie screams 'best-fucking-idiocy-of-the-1980's'. From the gore, which is campy (especially the interrupted-oral-sex scene which probably inspired a very similar gag in Eli Roth's fake trailer for Thanksgiving in Grindhouse), to the maniacs themselves, to the fact that the final showdown takes place at a highschool halloween dance during a battle of the bands between the quasi-hero's teenie-pop band and a hair metal band. All done without a hint of self-consciousness or concern for taste.

The effects are pretty good, with most of the kills played as gags, and I personally just love the whole concept of the maniacs. The acting is alright, but at the end of the day, even a compelling performance is going to be kind of a 'who cares' next to a one-eyed beast with huge meathooks chopping up some jock's face, or a demon-thing dressed like a native american warrior shooting green slime out of its torso while a bunch of costumed teens pelt it with squirt guns.

All in all, an over-the-top exercise in ridiculous action and campy gore that anyone with a good sense of humor and a love of the brutally absurd should appreciate.

Title: The Hidden
Director: Jack Sholder
Year: 1987

The Hidden exemplifies yet another gem of the 1980's. I would call this movie Predator meets Terminator meets Robocop on steroids. It's an excellent alien-among-us story(taking its cue from Robert Heinlein's seminal alien-invasion novel The Puppet Masters). An over-the-top, ultraviolent testosterone-fest full of guns, explosions, fast cars, and heavy fucking metal. Once again, only in the 80's.

The basic premise revolves around an alien lifeform come to Earth that hides inside a human host and takes it over. Only this is no ordinary alien. It isn't here to colonize, or exterminate us, or feed on us like food, or use our planet for natural resources. Hell no, because that would make sense. Drop that shit at the door, friends. This alien is here to fucking party. And partying means killing people, robbing banks, stealing Ferraris, and getting in high-speed chases. Partying means sex, drugs, big-ass medium rare steak dinners, violence, guns, and Iron Maiden. Can anyone say 'no' to that?

The effects are great, especially the alien itself. I've heard that the infamous early scene showing the alien transferring from one host to another has made some people physically ill. Once the alien controls a body, it can take a lot more damage before going down than a person normally can, so you basically have squib-city here. People running around riddled with bullet holes killing cops and anyone else who gets in the way. Lots of pulpy bullet impacts and blood. So the action here is pretty intense, and very well done, especially the pretty awesome car stunts and explosions.

The gun battles are great. There is a literal plethora of weapons making their show in this movie, from flamethrowers to assault rifles to rocket launchers. Not a damn thing is off-limits here. The pacing is excellent, the action pretty much never lets up, and the plot moves along at breakneck speed, advancing from one spate of violence to the next. You really feel like you were on one hell of a rollercoaster ride after seeing this, especially if you try to watch anything a little more cerebral afterwards. It just doesn't compare.

All in all, The Hidden really satisfies any craving for extreme violence, nasty aliens, and over-the-top gunfighting action. It's a real hit of 1980's film-making, with a taste for the outrageous, the absurd, and the gratuitous. We really just don't see movies like this anymore, and that is pretty sad in my opinion. So, yes, the Hidden is absolutely essential viewing for fans of The Terminator, Robocop, Predator, Predator 2, Aliens, etc. Oh yeah, and the pounding metal soundtrack is pretty badass, too.

30ml of Concentrated Invincibility

Title: Creature
Director: William Malone
Year: 1985

It is generally referred to as a big fat Alien ripoff, but after viewing 1985's Creature I have to agree to the letter of this sentiment, but not the spirit. It definitely is a BIG, FAT, AWESOME Alien ripoff. Of the glut of movies which would eventually try to claim this (non) distinction, Creature stacks up as the best, biggest-budget, most original Alien clone of the 80's.

There are a couple of things this movie has going for it: number one, it's real fucking weird. The atmosphere, the set design, the setting, the characters, all weird. Aesthetically, it has such an original feel to it, that I don't think I would have called it an Alien ripoff until after I watched the last 15 minutes. The sets are very well done. The costuming is pretty excellent as well, and the effects are standard 1980's eye-candy fare. There's nothing excessively amateurish about the production values on this movie, so the reason for people panning it so completely are a bit above my head. This isn't groundbreaking cinema, but it's good fun for fuck's sake.

Number two, this film has Klaus Kinski. Maybe he should be part of reason number one, but he makes the movie even fucking weirder. Because, his character is...weird. German and weird.
Good fun.

Number three, as is SOP for movies of this kind, Creature boasts its own incomprehensible alien life cycle, complete with mind-controlling parasites that turn its victims into sleep-walking zombie hybrid things. The parasites were cool looking, yes. The zombie makeup was awesome (the people would keep moving and attacking, even when severely wounded, making for some excellent gory makeup).

However, I think what dissappointed people so very much was the...uh...creature itself. It's kind of bad looking. But...on the upside, it has so little actual screen time, that you can't really see it anyway. And isn't that like Lovecraft's rule? Talk about the monster, describe it second or third hand, give us grisly glimpses of it, but never, ever under any circumstances actually show it because the illusion dies right there? Well...director William Malone doesn't precisely follow that rule, he does show the monster, but only for milliseconds or under extremely lowlit conditions. So, to me, Creature has so much going for it, I can't help but not slight the movie for this failing.

I haven't even gotten to the last big fat reason to love Creature: it is seriously fucking gory. Down to the last decapitation and exploding zombie head. Fucking gory. Way gorier than Alien. Way gorier than Aliens (not saying a lot), or Predator, or even Xtro--so if this film is just an Alien-wanna-be, it is one badass, blood-spurting, zombie-ridden, gung-ho wanna-be, and isn't that, after all, the best way to go?

My biggest complaint (as per usual) is the DVD. Totally pisspoor. This one is certainly transferred from video. The picture quality can be bad nearly to distraction at times. It seems like the picture only reaches passable quality at just the right moments, but most of the time it is pretty murky looking. Plus it's in fullscreen. It's not unwatchable though, and at a 3$ price tag, I guess you (sometimes) get what you pay for.

Watch anyway. At some point maybe Anchor Bay or someone will hit this shit and re-release it the way it deserves.

Title: Humanoids from the Deep
Director: Barbara Peters
Year: 1980

The real intellect behind this 1980's eco-mutant-sploitation flick was the great Roger Corman. His justification for the movie was doing an updated version of a 50's b-movie but showing everything you couldn't get away with in the 50's. And that means three things: breasts, gore, and mutant fishman rape.

In fact rumor has it that most of the shock and nude footage were shot after director Barbara Peters had completed her cut of the film. When she refused to shoot some of the more gratuitous stuff Corman wanted (i.e. naked chicks running around, copulation sequences, and gore scenes), he fired her and got an uncredited stand-in director to shoot the rest of the stuff. Arguably, without that extra stuff Humanoids wouldn't be the cult classic that it is.

While it does what it does with a pretty straight face, Humanoids is still a kick-ass, over-the-top, outrageous product of the 1980's. While incongruously plot-heavy and serious at times, it's still loaded with ridiculous moments, such as the bare-breasts cue that always signals a humanoid is about to pop out and try to mate with an unwilling female. Ah yes, did I mention that part of the movie's premise is that the titular monsters have a strong desire to copulate with the fairer of the Homo sapiens sexes? The gore sequences and humanoid attacks are done with such gleeful tastelessness and heavy doses of brutal camp that once you've seen the culminating festival scene, it's pretty hard not to love this movie.

The humanoids themselves, a horde of mutant salmon-men produced by genetically altering some such to benefit industry and the like, were designed and created by a young Rob Bottin (of The Thing, Robocop, Total Recall), so if you're a fan of his work, or a completist about that kind of stuff, you may be interested in seeing this for that reason. The creatures aren't necessarily the same quality of work as Bottin would achieve on John Carpenter's The Thing, but they are fun, and pretty neat-looking (considering he was like 16 or 17 when he worked on this flick). The gore effects are also nice when they occur, prompting the appropriate bellowing response from me during my first time through.

All in all, Humanoids is certainly not for everyone, and I think the closing scene (let's just say that sometimes a fish man sexual assault bears fruit) will probably turn a lot of people off, but for me, I loved every minute of this schlocky, blood-splattered, seaweed tangled classic.

The DVD is a boot (as I've mentioned before) of the European cut of Humanoids (known in Europe as Monster!). The picture quality is excellent, though my burn of it is skippy in spots, but nothing that really ruins the experience for me. The original US version was heavily cut (mostly prejudiced against the gore), and is out-of-print. If you find it it will probably run you upwards of 50$. Try tracking down a boot of the Euro cut for way cheaper and for more graphic decapitation.

The Dead Next Door/Evil (To Kako)/The Beyond (Aka Seven Doors of Death) - Originally posted May 22nd 2007

A couple of reviews. Enjoy.

Title: Evil (To Kako, Greek title)
Director: Yorgos Noussias
Year: 2005

I think this is one of the first Greek horror movies I've ever seen. Evil is basically a low-budget zombie flick, but it is definitely head-and-shoulders above many of its contemporaries because of its ambition and creativity. I think this movie shows what a film maker can do with a small amount of money (something like 170,000.00 US dollars) as long as the creative drive is strong.

While the movie is obviously shot on digital video, the camera work itself is still pretty good, and leads me to assume it was just a logistical cost-cutting decision. It's really the only aspect of the movie that shouts "low budget". The money was quite obviously spent on the effects work, which is nothing short of fantastic. For one thing, I can't figure out how such a modest movie managed to get so many sections of Athens cleared of people for filming. The city really looks deserted! The seams never show, and there are a lot of cool location shoots, including backed up highways full of abandoned cars, and empty streets. You can almost take setting for granted, because it's so well done you don't even notice. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but I can't figure out how they pulled off that ending. Evil is a movie that obviously manages to shoot far above its limits (unlike that piece of crap 'zombie' movie The Roost I reviewed previously, which manages to land far below its own limits).

The acting can be hit or miss, but most of the time you don't notice it. Evil is billed as a horror-comedy, but most of the 'dialogue comedy' comes from one or two idiotic characters. This is probably the most jarringly sophomoric feature of the whole film. Half of the characters seem to be dealing with the zombie attack realistically, and the other characters are bizarre comedic foils who mostly fail to garner too many real laughs. The comedy is sort of an unfortunate tension-killer just because it seems kind of misplaced. With the possible exception of the womanizing cab driver's wet dream sequence. I did find that to be a nice blend of comic and disturbing. I think if the real comedy would have been limited to the over-the-top gore sequences this movie would have been a little more polished. As it is, it seems that the screenwriter and director have a bit to learn about character and character relationships. But even so, this tiny flaw is not enough to make sitting through Evil frustrating. I can pretty much accept most of what low-budget film making throws at you, and these tiny inadequacies are par for the course in my opinion.

As for gore, this movie has it. I mean dump trucks full of it. Usually these movies will kind of pick a couple of really gory effects and highlight them as the film's major set pieces. You'll get maybe four or five really cool kills and that's about it. If you're lucky, you get maybe one whole sequence. I'm not complaining, but this movie doesn't content itself with that at all. Evil provides several, ridiculously protracted sequences of zombie slaughter. I can't count the number of people that are killed, honestly, or the number of times blood jets out of a truncated extremity. The kills are pretty hilarious, with a very obvious harkening to Pete Jackson's Bad Taste. While tongue-in-cheek in nature, the violence and gore comes in a high-enough volume to satisfy my own cravings for spewing red stuff.

Any flick that refuses to settle for just one graphic decapitation definitely rates excellent in my book. On top of that, you have a pretty good pull-apart sequence among many other things. Like its bloodthirsty subjects, Evil is a movie that refuses to lie down. It doesn't flinch from its own ambitious vision, and doesn't flinch from pouring gallons of gore on its sense of physical comedy. All in all, Evil is highly recommended, especially for anyone who enjoyed Bad Taste.

Title: The Dead Next Door
Director: J.R. Bookwalter
Year: 1988

Before I can really say anything about this movie, it must be understood that The Dead Next Door is basically a four-year-long student film project written and put together by a bunch of kids from Akron, Ohio who had just graduated from high school. The cast and crew consist of the entire city of Akron. Many of the 'actors' are also crew members performing multiple duties, and NO ONE, absolutely NO ONE got paid to make this. One cast/crew-member described The Dead Next Door as a four-year-long party that the population of Akron was invited to.

Okay, so I've laid the foundation for my review of what is basically an excellent zombie flick, an enormously successful no-budget student film, and a total cult classic. Some people say this movie is terrible, unwatchable, and a waste of time. I think a lot of amateur film 'critics' know so little about the movie-making process that their considered opinion is devoid of any real insight into film itself. They are just idiots with an internet connection, too much time (not enough time to proofread though, never enough time for that), and a need to feel superior to something by talking down on it. It's hard for me to appreciate a movie without knowing what, exactly, went into making it. The story behind the story, so to speak. Let's face it, you can slam the 'acting' in The Dead Next Door all you want, but when you take into account the fact that no one in the movie was an actor, and of these non-actors, none of them got paid, your attack becomes sort of baseless. Like putting on full armor and attacking a hot fudge sundae, to paraphrase Vonnegut. The whole film was one big labor of love for people who had zero film-making experience. You have to admit that what they managed to do is pretty amazing. I can't emphasize that enough.

The Dead Next Door was shot on 16mm film, so there is no such thing as a "widescreen" version of this movie; it was essentially shot in full screen on video. Probably one of the first things you'll notice. The other thing you'll notice is that the people in this movie aren't all exactly photogenic. If you remember they aren't actors, you'll be able to make a tiny leap and infer that they would probably not be pretty either. The acting is also not necessarily deserving of the term. It's ok. These people aren't even amateur actors. They were regular people who volunteered for their parts! Keep in mind: no one got paid for this.

Those are the major hurtles one has to get over in order to fully appreciate The Dead Next Door. Because once you swallow all your Hollywood-fed movie prejudice, you can goggle at the sheer ambitious scale of this flick. It's shot on multiple locations! A ridiculous number of them, in fact! From zombies trying to storm the Whitehouse lawn, to zombies infesting downtown Akron, to zombies climbing onto moving vehicles, The Dead Next Door doesn't screw around trying to establish the sense that the entire country has been overrun by zombies. And it does a pretty convincing job! The Whitehouse sequence and the zombie car-stunt sequence alone are absolutely retarded in the magnitude of their ambitiousness. And these fucking kids pulled it off! How many no budget student films have a full-blown car-stunt sequence, with people hanging off fast-moving vehicles and getting thrown off of them? None come to mind.

Besides some pretty excellently executed set pieces like the aforementioned sequences, and the highly ambitious plot, the area where The Dead Next Door really shines is the gore. I'm convinced that one of the movies Robert Rodriguez watched while penning his ideas for Planet Terror was none other than The Dead Next Door. This movie doesn't provide just a little gore. It doesn't provide a moderate amount of gore. It pours on thick layers of retardedly good gore effects. Once you see the infamous severed head sequence at the beginning of the movie you know you're in for something special. The Dead Next Door is pretty much about as over-the-top as Planet Terror, but obviously done on no budget, more than 20 years earlier, and without real actors. And yet, in spite of all its obvious flaws, Mr. Bookwalter's genius shines through pretty heavily.

In sum, you can't call yourself a fan of zombie flicks if you haven't seen this. You can't call yourself a true geek if you don't own this. And you'll probably have an easier time keeping a girlfriend if you don't love this movie as much as I do, but who the fuck is counting, anyway?

Title: The Beyond (AKA: The Seven Doors of Death)
Director: Lucio Fulci
Year: 1981

I'm not really reviewing this movie. I don't have to, because it's a classic, it's a Fulci movie, and doesn't really need my opinion.

But I do want to say that I'd been looking for a copy of it for awhile and my search finally bore fruit. And such delicious fruit it was. Amazon has the DVD up for $22.00. Twenty-one dollars and ninety-nine motherfucking cents which I refuse to drop on anything that doesn't say "SUPER DOUBLE EXTRA LIMITED UNCUT UNRATED WIDESCREEN DIGITALLY REMASTERED AND RESTORED 40-DISC SPECIAL EDITION WITH 8 VERSIONS OF THE MOVIE, 5 EIGHT HOUR LONG DOCUMENTARIES, AND 4 OTHER COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FEATURE LENGTH MOVIES" on it. So when I found the same DVD Amazon is selling at the aforementioned criminal price for only FOUR DOLLARS (!!!11!!!) at F.Y.E. of all places (this is why it can be a good idea to occasionally drop into these horrific mega-chains) I had to snatch it up.

The only thing this DVD version of The Beyond (The Seven Doors of Death) has going for it is that it is in widescreen. Other than that the picture is so-so, not particularly good, but not unwatchable either. However, as for the movie itself? I can see why a lot of people say that this movie is Fulci's masterpiece. I have to agree. If Fulci's aim is to disregard cinematic decency and thoroughly disgust you, then this movie has achieved this aim far above Zombie or City of the Living Dead. People have accused this film of making no sense. They have accused Fulci of directing extremely wooden performances out of his actors. They have accused The Beyond of just being gory for gore's sake. I think these reactions are merely the rationalizations of people who were disturbed by their experience watching this. I say 'FUCK THEM'.

I'm not going to go into any real detail here. Suffice to say, I think The Beyond has two of the all-time best scenes in cinematic history: A girl being attacked and killed by her own seeing-eye dog (graphically, of course, as only Fulci would do it), and a gun battle against zombies in which a little (possessed) girl is shot and the entire top portion of her head is blown off (again, as chunky and splattery as only Fulci would bring us).

Both these scenes are present-day cinematic no-no's. No director, not even a horror director, would really go there (except maybe Eli Roth). My immediate reaction was something like "Oooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, MAAAAAAAAN! I can't believe he went for it!" It's this tendency to go for broke and just show you what you really don't want to see that makes Fulci's The Beyond such a goddamn masterpiece. It's less a movie with a coherent plot than it is a series of psychotic, dream-like vignettes loosely strung together by some disaffected and numb characters and a vague plot about the Book of Eibon (Lovecraft reference, anyone?) and one of the Seven Doors to Hell being discovered in the basement of an old Louisiana hotel.

And it works for all that, or rather; it works because of all that.

Also, if you have an eye-phobia, you definitely shouldn't see this. Eyes get gouged, eaten out of the socket by tarantulas, and one woman has her head impaled on a spike which pops through her eyeball.

I've read in several places that the US release of The Beyond was heavily cut to secure an R rating. I haven't been able to figure out which version of the movie I now own, because the movie is rated R on the package. And yet, if this is the cut US version, I can't imagine what they cut out of it. Nothing is left to the imagination, and I can easily pick out the scenes that I imagine would have been cut. So, I'm leaning towards this being the un-cut international release and not the US version. Though I don't know for sure. If my version is in fact the hacked-up US version, I'd love to see what they cut out of it. I can't even fathom what could be more graphic than the brutal crucifixion in The Beyond's opening sequence.

Maybe protracted scenes of poultry bestiality or a dance number featuring hobo-clowns and a man eating raw beef. That would be worthwhile to do some editing magic on, just to spare me the agony.

All in all, if you are awful like me, see this.

The Origins of the Self-Propelled Cerebral Bore; reviews of Phantasm I-IV - Originally posted May 10th 2007

Well, after watching all four of these movies in a two-day period, I've finally gotten around to writing reviews for all four (believe me, it took awhile). I made a promise, which I intended to keep, but I've seen a lot of other awesome flicks since, and now that I've finished this gargantuan task, I'll be back to reviewing flicks two at a time and more frequently. I like the double-feature format, love it, in fact.

So, here you go. Hope this takes almost as many lunch breaks to read as it took for me to write them.

Title: Phantasm
Director: Don Coscarelli
Date: 1979

Ok, so this is where it all starts. I think one of the major requirements for a film to achieve cult status is its ability to present iconic imagery that becomes indelibly impressed upon both the viewer and popular culture. I would make the claim that modern popular culture is sort of a modern mythology. Certainly the old religions had their mythologies directly tied to them, and the attendant stories and legends were very relevant to those cultures in their respective time periods. Modern religion lacks mythology, I think (religion being a topic for another discussion here). We rely on popular culture, not only to tell "our story", which can sometimes to lapse into boring and self-congratulatory crap because of pop culture's implicit commercialism, but also to supply us with a sense of awe, imaginative inspiration, and a bit of the ultra-mundane which we need to survive psychologically in our often unfulfilling lives.

So what does this have to do with Phantasm? Well, Phantasm fits the bill for my hypothetical cult movie requirements. It is a piece of modern mythology. It is filled to the brim with iconic imagery which remains with a person long after having seen it. Don Coscarelli offers up some pieces from his own dreams and nightmares for us to digest, most of which are bizarre but effective.

The basic premise is simplistic, but novel. It sounds like something out of a dream: an inhuman undertaker, called the Tall Man, steals the dead in order to crush them and re-animate them into dwarf creatures that serve as his minions, depopulating towns, striving to take over the world. I first saw Phantasm on the Sci-Fi Channel when I was eleven or twelve and I have to admit the Tall Man gave me nightmares. Scary as shit. The idea is only a little less scary to me at twenty six.

For a low-low- budget flick, Phantasm pulls off a lot of cool and interesting effects. Everything from our first bloody encounter with the so-called Sentinel Sphere (actually named by fans, as they are never called anything other than 'spheres' in the movies), to the various nightmarish manifestations of the Tall Man (his severed fingers come to mind); Coscarelli takes us into some pretty ambitious territory. If I hold this movie up next to some modern J-Horror rip-off flick I have to say the modern stuff comes up smelling stale, while the ideas Phantasm deals with haunt you. Plus, honestly, this movie is way cooler than some hack screenplay where a bunch of good-lucking teenagers get offed, PG-13 style, by a vengeful ghost. There's just no comparison.

How many modern horror flicks come up with something as innovative as a flying metal ball that drills a hole in your head and drains all the blood out of you? How many modern horror flicks invoke an alternate dimension full of crushed dwarf-zombies crawling around in slime? How many modern horror flicks have a thirteen year old boy who runs around with a shotgun and drives a Dodge Hemi Cuda? You don't see anything that audacious anymore, that's for sure.

And that's why Phantasm works, and is probably one of the most memorable horror films ever made. My assessment: an absolutely essential film if you've never seen it, Phantasm kicks off a series that has more to offer with each installment.

Anchor Bay's DVD re-release is absolutely flawless. Excellent transfer, widescreen format, and a shit load of cool extras; the cast and crew interviews being among my favorites, just because it was neat to hear people talk about being part of a film and being completely baffled by it at the same time.

Title: Phantasm II
Director: Don Coscarelli
Year: 1988

Almost ten years after the original, Mr. Coscarelli forays back into the world of Phantasm. This movie takes much of the iconic imagery from the first installment and puts it into overdrive, to excellent effect. The story of Mike Pearson and Reggie Bannister and their battle with the Tall Man continues, so it becomes apparent that this is no exploitation sequel (the "let's do the first movie over with a bigger budget" school of filmmaking [or film-marketing as the case may be]).

However, the film does in fact have a bigger budget, so consequently we do in fact get more zombie dwarves, more Hemi Cuda, more Tall Man, more Sentinel Spheres, and more gore and action…and a few explosions, too. But who's going to fault the director for this? Certainly no friend of mine.

We also get to see the first appearance of the infamous four-barreled shotgun. I've already spoken at length about the significance of crazy weaponry in horror films, so I won't spew too much redundant crap here, but I will say that I think the quad shotgun is FUCKING AWESOME.

Some people have expressed the opinion that Phantasm II isn't faithful to the original because of its more action-oriented plot, however I think the logic behind this fails for two reasons: One, Phantasm II isn't a re-make of Phantasm. It follows a specific plot premise based on the end of the first film in which Mike wants to pursue the Tall Man and destroy him. Obviously, this plot choice requires a bit more action because the protagonists are taking a more aggressive stance. I would get sick of characters in a sequel who are still running around being terrorized the same way they were in the original. The only way to make that tenable would be to start over with new characters, and there you have the "lets make Phantasm again but with a bigger budget" conclusion. This would have pretty much killed the series and made any sequels into a set of redundant do-overs that no one would have taken seriously (much like several other 1980's horror franchises).

Second, I think Coscarelli actually is pretty faithful to his first attempt in that he does go out of his way to continue the dream-like quality of the mood and pacing found in the original. That feeling of skewed cause-and-effect relationships and distorted reality carries over brilliantly from film to film. And here, Phantasm II introduces the idea that the Tall Man is actually depopulating the world, emptying out small town after small town. It pulls the plot out of its original narrower limits and starts globalizing it, expanding it. Rather than carrying the series in a different direction, I think Phantasm II actually expands on the themes of the original. Plus, the first film did have a fair amount of action in it to begin with and I think some people forget that.

Some people also dish on Phantasm II because a different actor (James LeGros instead of A. Michael Baldwin) picks up the role of Mike Pearson.

Over all, an excellent addition to the series, and a movie that managed to prove that a horror sequel didn't have to be a bigger budget rendition of the original (a rather obvious aspect of, say, Evil Dead 2). This movie continues the Phantasm journey into a completely new and innovative horror landscape.

A note on the DVD:

There is no domestic release of Phantasm II and, for now, I can't find any plans for one. I had to get my copy from a previously-mentioned dude who does DVD bootlegs. Excellent bootlegs, but bootlegs nonetheless. The version he sells is the widescreen European release and comes on two discs, the second disc containing the director's "work print" (original rough cut of the movie, prior to adding optical or visual effects, and even prior to cleaning the negatives).
While this is actually a pretty nice set, which my Canadian friend actually put together himself, I have to bitch a little bit about the quality. Not the bootlegger's quality. I'm talking about the quality of the European transfer. I've picked up other things from this guy before, and they were all perfect, crisp DVD quality (I have a fan edit of Star Wars, Episode I from this guy and I can't tell the difference between my DVD-R and the original cut on factory-pressed DVD) so that means that the European original is at fault. It looks like it was transferred from fucking video, and sounds like it, too. I wouldn't be surprised. Before special editions got popular, pressing companies would just release what the fuck ever version they could find. I have heard of companies literally just transferring a movie from an old video version, cutting the top and bottom off the screen and calling it widescreen, rather than going after the original negatives, restoring them, and digitally re-mastering them, which is more common now. These older practices are inexcusable and they're kind of a rip-off for consumers.

So, when I watch Phantasm and then watch the second, I can see the difference. I mean, you can tell it's not just that one is a DVD and the other a burned bootleg. You can see the care that Anchor Bay put into its re-release of Phantasm, and the lack of care that went into the European release of Phantasm II. So, this is the real reason why I wish Phantasm II would find a domestic DVD release. I can watch my bootleg anytime, and it really isn't that hard to get a copy. But, I'm not necessarily ready to settle for the crappy European release. I would prefer that some company, like Anchor Bay, put in the care that is necessary and restore this movie to its original crisp splendor. Plus, they could probably use the work print as well and extend some of the gorier scenes to their original length. Phantasm II came out just when the MPAA was cracking down on horror film violence, so some of what's in the theatrical release was actually cut heavily from the original version to secure an R rating.

Still, overall essential viewing if you can track down a bootleg. Or maybe you can talk me into showing it to you. Hah.

Title: Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead
Director: Don Coscarelli
Year: 1994

I don't know if I'm going to take shit for saying this, but I think that this is the best movie in the series. A lot of reviews I read prior to seeing the film indicated that Phantasm III was the weakest of the four films, and that it suffered from too much goofiness (something that the reviewers never exactly explained). Some even said that you should skip this one and just see the 4th film. The Anchor Bay re-release of Phantasm III is an all-new uncut version so differences of opinion may rest on which respective cut of the film you've seen. However, I still have to emphatically say that I went into this movie expecting little because of what other folks lead me to believe only to come away with my mind blown.

This film takes the Phantasm saga to new heights. Yes, things definitely get crazier, but I think as Mike and Reggie get closer to the Tall Man, things are definitely bound to turn from fucked up to much more fucked up. We've got a crazy little kid bristling with homemade weaponry, a nun chuck wielding chick, and some post-apocalyptic bandits who end up getting turned into zombie fodder. We get more explanation by way of how the Spheres are actually created by the Tall Man, and we have some more excellent experiences with his other-worldly physical makeup.

The film continues the series with its dream-like plot progression and backdrop of desolate and depopulated small American towns. The look of the film is great, the abandoned towns looking better than ever. The effects are top notch with some excellent gore (more than either of the previous Phantasm movies) and some pretty over-the-top kills courtesy of the Sentinel Spheres. The four-barrel shotgun makes its return, and Reggie actually gets a lot more mileage out of it than he got in Phantasm II, and of course, we get a lot more car porn as the camera lovingly caresses the Hemi Cuda.

We learn a bit more about the Tall Man's plans for Earth, and how he intends to implement those plans. We also get to see how he builds his army, both of dwarves and of spheres. And we get introduced to the idea that the Tall Man has some special designs for Mike, that their meeting was no accident, and that Mike's ability to see the Tall Man when no one else could is also no accident.

The ambitiousness of the plot and the inclusion of a lot more over-the-top craziness parallels the direction of another low-budget horror franchise that waded into some pretty improbable territory only two years earlier. The Evil Dead movies culminate in Army of Darkness during roughly period that Phantasm III comes out.

When you compare the two series, and look at their relatively similar release dates, it brings some interesting insights into the viewing of Phantasm III. While Phantasm III doesn't quite achieve the scale that Army of Darkness goes for, Phantasm III doesn't ever become comic or slapstick, which was the decided direction of Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness. There are funny moments, sure, but they are more darkly humorous than outright comedic. The third Phantasm film still retains the series' aura of haunting malevolence and mental disorientation.

So, the upshot is that there is a whole lot to enjoy in this movie, and that if you've gotten this far with the Phantasm series, you won't be disappointed.

Anchor Bay's restoration of Phantasm III is absolutely beautiful and some of the extras on this DVD are also worth a good look. Special kudos for releasing the movie in its uncut version, because I have to say ratings are overrated. Give me back the gore.

Title: Phantasm IV: Oblivion (sometimes Phantasm: OblIVion)
Director: Don Coscarelli
Year: 1998

So this is where it ends (for now, anyway). Phantasm IV shows that Don Coscarelli still has a wealth of ideas to mine for this decades-spanning film series. While there's noticeably less action in Phantasm IV, there is still the same weirdness of plot and the same sense of revelation as Mike and Reggie continue their hunt for the Tall Man.

This film definitely does put a new unexpected twist on the history of the Tall Man and his origins, and elaborates more on his plans for Mike. There are some hallmark Phantasm moments, some of my favorites including Reggie's rather ridiculous (and a little bit disturbing) encounter with an unexpected pair of spheres, Reggie's battle with the monster cop, and Reggie suiting up for battle in his ice-cream vendor outfit, breaking out the quad shotgun.

Come to think of it, most of the action happens to Reggie, while the scenes with Mike focus more on his psychological state as he deals with whatever it is the Tall Man has in store for him. We follow Mike as he travels solo through the Tall Man's dimensional forks looking for some clue that will help him destroy the malevolent undertaker.

The effects are great, they just get better and better, and the look of the film is once again excellent. I'm actually a huge fan of the Death Valley stuff. Great agoraphobic, empty location for a film. This installment also makes use of a ton of discarded footage from the original Phantasm, which is both an excellent way to tie the movies back together (it's especially neat to see A. Michael Baldwin who plays Mike in Phantasm, Phantasm III, and Phantasm IV go from being a scared but spunky thirteen-year old boy to a thirty-something psychotic deranged by years of hunting for, and being mentally tormented by, his supernatural nemesis) and a great way to instill that sense of dream-continuity. Things that seemingly never happened now appear to have happened, and vice-versa.

Of course, we get more zombie dwarves (eh, I just realized I'm using Tolkien's pluralization), a horde of spheres, more quad shotty, more Hemi Cuda, a very interesting use for the Tall Man's notorious black hearse, and a whole lot of dimensional forking. There are some ambitious moments in the movie, especially when Mike stumbles upon the origins of the dimensional forks and the origins of the Tall Man himself. I won't say more, you've got to see it, but I want to get it across to anyone reading this that Coscarelli isn't just milking the series by the fourth movie (something I sort of expected when I picked this up), but is really just continuing the odyssey, taking it in the direction that dream-logic would dictate for it.

It's an excellent flick, stands on its own, as any of these movies do. The ending is actually kind of heavy, and leaves me wondering if there's more in store or not. It's one of those few movie endings where the director could go either way, where the viewer could find himself both contented with the series ending there, even with a lot of unanswered questions, but also willing to continue with another film if Coscarelli decides to take us there. There are, as I just said, a lot of unanswered questions. They could either be mined for another film, or, in true Phantasm-style, just be left that way.

The DVD is still in print in the US, and is pretty easy to get a hold of. Widescreen format, decent transfer (it is a recent film, so I don't imagine we're losing a lot, even without digital re-mastering, etc) no real special features (bummer).

So, to conclude this extra-long run of reviews, see the Phantasm movies! Pick up the Anchor Bay re-releases (especially if you just like DVDs, because a lot of lovin' obviously went into these), pick up Phantasm IV, and hunt down a boot of Phantasm II (ah, the internet, you have your uses).

Or don't see them, and enjoy your psychologically desolate existence.

That Boy's Got the Devil in Him...A Shit-Ton of Reviews - Originally posted April 12th 2007

Been busy lately. Well, I've been busy writing these reviews anyway. I've got a good 5 of them to post this time around, so you'll be able to spend a couple of (paid, shhh) lunch breaks reading these. Included are reviews of Grindhouse, segment: Planet Terror, The Dreams in the Witch-House, The Roost, The Resurrected, and The Nest.

A few preliminaries before I go into things.

Number one, after having some less than stellar cinematic experiences within the last few weeks, I realized why the bad review has its place in this world: public service. My words of warning will allow you to avoid the same movie-watching mistakes I have made. So in the spirit of 'don't step there, and if you don't believe me believe my boots' I'm presenting not one, but two reviews of not-so-good flicks. Don't worry, I basically stick to my 3 sentence rule, with a little variation, but hey, rules are made to be bent and then re-made, right?

Number two, I saw Grindhouse. Twice. [Editor's Note: that's three times now] And as I've mentioned I'm including a review of Planet Terror, but I've decided not to include my review of Death Proof because after a second viewing and some discussion I don't feel equipped to review it. I don't know too much about the exploitation genre and I hate nothing more than an uneducated reviewer pissing on something because he's got it all out of context. Not that I piss on Death Proof at all, but I figure I'll leave it to someone who knows what Tarantino is going for better than I do to provide an expert opinion. I'll just say I liked Death Proof though I felt it was very slow compared to Planet Terror.

Lastly, Phantasm and Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead hit shelves this week, so watch for my review of the entire Phantasm series very soon.

So without further adieu, here are my reviews:

Title: Grindhouse
Segment 1: Planet Terror
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Year: 2007

Oh man. Oh man. This is definitely one the best things I've seen in a few years. Hands down. I mean, there have been some good films in the last five years, but this kind of movie has not been released in a good while.

I'll save my discussion of the machine gun leg for a bit. That's one of the things that got me in the door, and it was definitely delivered on. The other thing that got me in the door was the promise of gore and a whole lot of it. So the minute the words "special makeup effects by Gregory Nicotero" flashed across the screen, I knew that I was getting my money's worth, and then some. I might go so far as to say this is some of his best work, although I can't seriously claim that I've seen every single film Mr. Nicotero has worked on. I have, however, seen a good lot of them.

The film aging effect was cool, and it did two interesting things. The first is obvious, giving the film an aged, cheap, scratched up look. Made you feel filthy just watching the thing. Even though I was sitting in the immaculate (by some standards) AMC Forum 30 Auditorium Number 17 while watching this the first time, the dirty film effect did make me peer around a few times wondering how much dried semen covered the seats around me. I know that there was a lot of fresh semen on the back of the seat in front of me. Hah!

The other effect the film aging technique had was a little more subtle, but actually more powerful. For me, the dirty, grainy look of the film served to obscure many of the CGI effects and made them look more real. I think part of it was my brain being fooled into thinking the film was older. The other part was purely visual, but it worked. The CGI was a lot harder to spot most of the time, and some effects were more eerily believable than they might have been on a crisp print.

Honestly though, Mr. Rodriguez has outdone himself. The director of such gems as Spy Kids and The Faculty (I poke fun) delivers about as much gross-out over-the-top violence as one film can handle. There's blood, pus, exploding heads, pulsating growths, eyeball mayhem, dripping members, and a whole lotta limb-ripping cannibalism. Not to mention the ubiquitous machine-gun prosthetic. I think you get the idea.

If Kill Bill was a self-referencing homage to martial arts films, with casting decisions built in as references in and of themselves (i.e. you're supposed to know who Sonny Chiba is) then Planet Terror is a self-referencing homage to all the gooey, slimy, gory 1980's creature and zombie flicks. It has the same sort of built in casting references (i.e. you're supposed to know who Michael Biehn and Tom Savini are for the reveals on them to make any sense). The story is pretty typical fare with a little twist, and, of course, done much better than many films toying with the same basic premise. This is helped by the above-mentioned excellent casting choices. As I said you've got the Michael Biehn (of The Terminator and Aliens) and Tom Savini (of both Dawn of the Dead films, From Dusk Till Dawn, special effects guy on quite a few of George Romero's 'Dead' movies). You've got Bruce Willis (for like 10 seconds) and Michael Parks (Earl McGraw in nearly every other Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez movie ever made) and a shit-ton more. It's a cornucopia of b-movie faces.

One of the big set pieces to this film is itself a tribute to 80's horror: Rose McGowan's infamous machine gun leg, which is obviously inspired by Bruce Campbell's chainsaw hand in Evil Dead 2. This brings up kind of a big point I want to make about the difference between typical horror pablum and the cult classics that stand out above them. In your average, forgettable piece of horror tripe, you have your average forgettable human characters that flee and scream and cry and whine through the horrible ordeal they are going through and in the end, either survive by luck or don't make it at all. These characters are generally worse than just 'average' in these films; they are in fact usually just parodies of their prosaic, uninteresting real-life counterparts. This is what usually contributes to the all-around lifelessness of these movies. The characters are worse than flat, they're barely characters. I tend to find it insulting that I'm supposed to identify with these people.

Having so-called 'normal' people deal realistically with the premise of a horror movie (done effectively in The Descent) only works with extremely well-written characters. Your hard-partyin' teen stereotype must be abandoned, at any rate.

In the cult classics, however, there is necessarily an iconic hero (or heroine) that emerges from the ashes (so to speak) of their normal persona, someone who is beyond human, over-the-top, slightly skewed out of reality. Someone who becomes a machine or weapon themselves, or modifies some normal appliance into a barbaric armament to destroy whatever evil they're facing. Ash with his iconic chainsaw hand and double barreled boomstick comes to mind. So does Reggie from Phantasm with his 1970 Hemicuda and 4 barreled shotgun, Lionel with his lawnmower from Dead Alive, Ripley with her flamethrower/pulse rifle from Aliens, George with his motorcycle and samurai sword in Demons, and more recently Marion from Undead with his triple shotgun, and Sara with her homemade four-barreled shotgun in Dead and Breakfast. There is ample evidence to suggest that this plot device, this heroic transformation, has its roots in mythology. But I'm not here to dig into anthropology, I'm merely pointing out that many of the movies, or stories really, that we remember the best have this idea as one of their features.

Honestly, I don't know what Planet Terror will be like with the missing reel restored (you can count on there being an unrated extended DVD release) but without it, you've got pretty much 90 minutes of non-stop action and splatter. Excellent. As of now, I've seen this twice, and will probably see it again. And I haven't done that since I was 11 and saw Jurassic Park six times in the theater.

Title: The Dreams in the Witch-House
Director: Stuart Gordon
Year: 2006

This short film is part of that Masters of Horror series that was on HBO awhile back, which you might have seen at your local DVD retailer. My initial thoughts on seeing it were pretty harsh. I've watched it again, and I have to soften my opinion a bit, but that's not saying a whole heck of a lot.

My three sentences:

This film lacks any real special effects and contains very little patented Stuart Gordon gore, though it succeeds nominally at invoking a Lovecraftian atmosphere. It's worth purchasing if you are a Lovecraft junkie, but be aware that this is a mediocre adaptation and a downright forgettable Stuart Gordon flick. This film actually subtracts a little too much from original story, to the point where it kind of comes off as a stage production of a Lovecraft story, with all the attendant special effects technology that stage productions have…you know, colored lights and wires and such.

I'll reserve one extra sentence for my biggest complaint: Brown Jenkin is DUMB AS HELL. Gordon takes one of the creepiest and most iconic of Lovecraft's creations (one that used to give me nightmares), a bizarre rat with a hairy human face, a demonic witch's familiar, and he makes it into a goddamn Beatrix Potter character!

Anything positive?

Ezra Godden is decent. He's actually believable as a Lovecraftian protagonist, which has generally been pretty difficult for a lot of actors to do. Props to him for that. I hope he can make a career out of it.

All in all, The Dreams in the Witch-House is worth picking up on the cheap, and worth watching as part of a Friday night lineup of Lovecraft flicks, but watch it earlier in the evening and save the heavy hitters for later, because it's definitely one of the weakest recent films of that canon out there.

Title: The Roost
Director: Ti West
Year: 2005

Wow. Included in the special features of this DVD is a short movie called "Prey" billed as 'director Ti West's student film'. I think someone forgot to mention that The Roost is director Ti West's OTHER STUDENT FILM.

Maybe I need to try and watch this again. Maybe I'm slighting The Roost for some very shallow reasons. Maybe I'm just too oversaturated by sick special effects and free-flowing gore to appreciate this film's subtler points.

Maybe not.

Ok, in three sentences:

This movie takes a low budget and chooses unceremoniously to do nothing with it. The plot is beyond trite, and sucks as much life out of the movie's premise (bats that turn people into zombies with a bite) as it can by including the obligatory four hard-partyin' young people on their way to never-mind-it-doesn't-matter-you-can't-force-yourself-to-care-about-these-characters-much-less-their-unconvincing-story-setup-ville. Ok, last sentence, with the upshot: no gore, almost no on-screen violence, a body count that makes Sense and Sensibility look like a snuff film, and an inexcusably student-film-y setting: a goddamn barn in the countryside (obviously somebody knew somebody so they could film there for a few days, in lieu of, you know, a movie set).

Notice how I found a loop-hole around my 3-sentence rule…parenthetical asides and excessive hyphenation?

I guess, if there are positives, the bats were cool. I'm not sure if there was a bat trainer, or if the bats were CGI. Either way, it seems that's where all the budget was spent. The fact that I can't tell the difference is a testament to their effectiveness, but I would say 'director Ti West' definitely blew his wad on the bats and they, because of the pathetic screenplay, don't get to be as much of a tension-generating screen presence as they should have been. Some of the makeup is alright, but makeup is only one aspect of a good zombie flick. There are a whole lot of other things this film doesn't get right, almost too many for this to be anything other than a rent-it-once deal. It's almost too slow to be any fun, either, unless you are going to MST 3K-it.

Skip this fucker. Unless you are a REALLY huge fan of zombies. Then see it once, get mad at it, and go watch Day of the Dead.

Title: The Resurrected
Director: Dan O'Bannon
Year: 1992

Here we have a real lost gem of the early 90's. Wonder why I'd never heard of this movie before just a few months ago. The Resurrected is an excellent Lovecraft adaptation directed by, yes, Dan "Return of the Living Dead-Alien-Lifeforce, Etc Etc Etc" O'Bannon, busiest guy in b-Hollywood. It's based on Lovecraft's short novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and with the exception of a couple of character changes and the modern setting, it's pretty true to the book. I think what sets this adaptation apart from most others is that the changes to the story aren't actually hugely important to the central idea. This film actually does a pretty good job of trying to capture the complex idea Lovecraft was trying to get across, and invoking an atmospheric darkness.

I think the change that worked best was the inclusion of March, the private detective, through whose eyes and narrative we view the action. This detective story angle turns The Resurrected into a Lovecraftian film noir, which works really well in favor of both the film itself and the screenplay. I was surprised at how intelligent, agile, and natural the film was. Usually, even the best Stuart Gordon adaptation has an awkwardness to it, a feeling that the subject matter of the story is being somewhat forced into the form of a screenplay.

None of that here.

The screenplay is fluid, the characters have acceptable depth, and the acting is good for b-standards, and in a few cases, pretty convincing, especially Chris Sarandon's personality change between young Charles Ward and the 17th century wizard, Joseph Curwen. I admit, in all my jaded armor, the first time Curwen makes his appearance, it was pretty damn eerie.

But the other huge factor that this movie got right was the special effects. They were excellent! Some of the best creature, make-up, and stop-motion weirdness you could ask for. There was a surprisingly satisfying amount of goriness and visceral gross out; not too much to overshadow the story, but enough to show these guys wanted Lovecraft's hideous mutations to really breathe and move within the story, and that they wanted the violence to really hit home. I was stoked on this, in a movie that was already good to begin with.

A word on adaptations; I always walk into an adaptation knowing that considerations must be made in the translation between written word and film action. One should not expect a word-for-word, scene-by-scene re-telling of the book. Besides the obvious interventions of screenwriters and directors which always serve to put some spin on a story and alter the voice of the author, one has to consider the dramatic realities of film itself. In this case, the climax to The Resurrected did not occur in the original story. But that doesn't bother me at all. This is a movie; it needs a climax at the end to work. The dramatic climax of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward actually occurs about 3 quarters of the way through and the last quarter of the story consists of Lovecraftian denouement, with HPL deftly tying loose ends and leaving select ends untied. While this works in novel form, this somewhat languorous ending with its rambling resolution and minor piece of suspense at the end would be a total dramatic killer in a movie. So, I wasn't at all upset by the basically cosmetic theatrical alterations that had to be made. I liked this screenplay. It was very well done. This is recommended HIGHLY. My only gripe is the fucking DVD, while priced to sell (I found it for 7 bucks at Circuit City of all places) only comes in full screen. Alas, as I dig up more obscurities from the cinematic mausoleum I'm finding a lot of DVD releases with no special features and full screen the only available format.

Title: The Nest
Director: Terrance H. Winkless
Year: 1988

This thing is billed on the DVD case as part of a series of "Roger Corman Classics". While Corman seems to have had nothing to do with this film himself, someone related to him (I don't really know much of the story there) named Julia Corman produced. So, despite my obvious lack of savvy when it comes to Corman trivia or biographical factoids, the mere name Roger Corman is enough to attract me to a movie. And in this case, my undiscriminating taste served me well. The Nest is an excellent 80's invertebrate-infestation horror flick in the vein of the best of them (Slugs comes to mind). So, reasons to watch? First off, The Nest is about cockroaches! Excellent! That's enough to gross most people out alone. Then we learn that these aren't your average starving hordes of Periplaneta, these are genetically engineered carnivorous roaches! And then we further learn that these spiced up cockroaches have the ability to meld their DNA with whatever they eat, such that their resultant offspring are hybrids of giant Blattoidea and some random vertebrate mammal. I won't give anything away on that front, suffice to say, one of the results of this hybridization should be considered the stuff of cinema legend, and probably won't appeal to cat-lovers.

There is also a nice scene lifted from The Fly complete with all the attendant splatter, with some excellent creature effects, of the gross-out variety I love and expect from great 1980's fare.

Performances are for the most part above-average. Believable characters with believable motivations (no hard-partyin teens!), with the exception of the mad-scientist chick who created the roaches in the first place, who can be a little irritating. Maybe this was deliberate, maybe not, but I can assure you, when she bites it (ironic turn of phrase) it's satisfying to see her die more because it shuts her up than because of how evil she is.

Once again, my only gripe is the full screen presentation. Because of the obscurity of these films, I don't know that many of the "Roger Corman Classics" are available in widescreen, with the positive exception of Humanoids from the Deep, the only release in this series I've been able to track down that boasts digital re-mastering, widescreen format and a bunch of special feature documentaries. Unfortunately the US release is out of print and hard to find. It goes for fifty fucking dollars on Amazon. Not to get any more off topic, but I recently ordered a boot of the European release of Humanoids (called Monster in Europe), which comes in an uncut version (more gore and…uh…mammal stuff) but the original Euro version lacks the special features. The guys who did the boot combined the US and European release into one, so that you get the uncut Euro version of the movie along with the all the US version's special goodies. That's why specialty DVD retailers (FTW) are the best way to go. They love the movies you love, and they put the care into their 'products' that is deserved.

Anyway, to return to The Nest, I picked this up for 5$ as a pre-owned DVD at a Blockbuster Video, so I have to say I was pleasantly surprised at what I got. Certainly this movie should be properly filed under cult status, since it does a handy job of providing ridiculous gross-out, unsophisticated science fiction, and blatant ripping from more prominent movies like The Fly and others. Highly recommended.